I recently saw a post today about a woman who had been s.assaulted and was in fear for her safety and she was asking for suggestions. I had already seen a lot of "go to police, get restraining order, eliminate public social media presence" but no one said the most obvious thing to me, a dumb violent and vicious American, "pepper spray, or a taser or if your broke a sock full of rocks never seems to fail"

After the mandatory passive aggressive reddit comment thread and a little research I found that technically you can own those things but it's illegal to carry them on you person and if you defend yourself with them you would be arrested on assault charges yourself.

It's very concerning to me as my wife goes out with friends sometimes and occasionally gets tipsy (sometimes more than others but never sloppy) and I do worry. Especially in a country that seems to refuse to take SA seriously and police are never much help, or so I've been told as I haven't had to deal with that stuff, thank the Gods.

A friend of mine once had a drunk salary man that kept coming at him and wouldn't stop, so after the salary man punched he returned with a hook and laid him out (the salary man probably didn't need help getting to the ground though, he was sloppy drunk). Since my friend didn't have a lawyers phone number tatooed on his skin, he ended up spending the 28 day in jail, he didn't get charged but they decided to leave him in there as long as they could, even though there were witnesses around that told the cops that he was just defending himself. Sry for the tangent

My question how is a woman to defend herself here in Japan? Is there an self defence products that are allowed? Is the only option to be a black belt in karate? What if you have a restraining order in place against the assailant? Would it still be the same case?

TLDR: It seems carrying any sort of weapon in Japan can get you in deep shit and even returning someone's aggression can be a sticky situation. What are some ways to protect or defend yourself beyond running away?